Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes in 1991 [Iijima, “Helical microtubules of graphitic carbon,” Nature, 354, pp. 56-58, 1991] and single-wall carbon nanotubes in 1993 [Iijima et al., “Single-shell carbon nanotubes of 1-nm diameter,” Nature, 363, pp. 603-605, 1993; Bethune et al., “Cobalt-catalysed growth of carbon nanotubes,” Nature, 363, pp. 605-607, 1993], a substantial amount of research has been carried out involving the synthesis, chemistry, and manipulation of these novel materials. See Ebbesen, “Carbon Nanotubes,” Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci., 24, pp. 235-264 (1994); Zhou et al., “Materials Science of Carbon Nanotubes: Fabrication, Integration, and Properties of Macroscopic Structures of Carbon Nanotubes,” Acc. Chem. Res., 35(12), pp. 1045-1053 (2002); Dai, “Carbon Nanotubes: Synthesis, Integration, and Properties,” Acc. Chem. Res., 35(12), pp. 1035-1044 (2002). The goal of much of this research is to facilitate the exploitation of carbon nanotubes' intriguing properties. See Yakobson et al., “Fullerene Nanotubes: C1,000,000 and Beyond,” American Scientist, 85, pp. 324-337 (1997); Ajayan, “Nanotubes from Carbon,” Chem. Rev., 99, pp. 1787-1799 (1999); Baughman et al., “Carbon Nanotubes—the Route Toward Applications,” Science, 297, pp. 787-792 (2002).
Some of the properties of carbon nanotubes that researchers are desirous of exploiting are found most optimally in an exemplary type of carbon nanotube: the single-wall carbon nanotube. Single-wall carbon nanotubes have the highest conductivity of any known fiber [Thess et al., Science, “Crystalline Ropes of Metallic Carbon Nanotubes,” 273, pp. 483-487 (1996)], a higher thermal conductivity than diamond [Hone et al., “Electrical and thermal transport properties of magnetically aligned single wall carbon nanotube films,” Appl. Phys. Lett., 77, pp. 666-668 (2000)], and the highest stiffness of any known fiber [Yu et al., “Tensile Loading of Ropes of Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes and their Mechanical Properties,” Phys. Rev. Lett., 84, pp. 5552-5555 (2000)]. A great deal of research has been conducted to exploit their unique mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties to create multifunctional composite materials comprising carbon nanotubes, and single wall carbon nanotubes in particular. See Mitchell et al., “Dispersion of Functionalized Carbon Nanotubes in Polystyrene,” Macromolecules, 35, pp. 8825-8830 (2002); Thostenson et al., “Advances in the science and technology of carbon nanotubes and their composites: a review,” Composites Sci. & Tech., 61, pp. 1899-1912 (2001); Zhou et al., “Single-wall carbon nanotubes as attractive toughening agents in aluminum based nanocomposites,” Nature Materials, 2, pp. 38-42 (2003).
Carbon nanotubes have also been shown to have unexpected interactions with electromagnetic radiation. Recently, a surprising feature has been the ignition of nanotubes in the presence of an ordinary camera flash. See Ajayan et al., “Nanotubes in a Flash—Ignition and Reconstruction,” Science, 296, p. 705 (2002); Bockrath et al., “Igniting Nanotubes with a Flash,” Science, 297, pp. 192-193 (2002). Nanotubes will also ignite when exposed to microwaves in air. See Imholt et al., “Nanotubes in Microwave Fields: Light Emission, Intense Heat, Out-Gassing and Reconstruction,” Chem. Mater. 15, pp. 3969-3970 (2003). Methods that would exploit these interactions in an effort to produce engineered materials would be of tremendous benefit.